School Breakfast Scorecard - Food Research & Action Center

School Breakfast Scorecard

School Year 2016?2017

February 2018 n

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School Breakfast Scorecard

School Year 2016?2017

Acknowledgments

The Food Research & Action Center (FRAC) gratefully acknowledges major dedicated support of its work to increase participation and improve the School Breakfast Program from the following:

n Eos Foundation; n General Mills Foundation; n Hunger Is, a joint program of

The Albertsons Companies Foundation and the Entertainment Industry Foundation; n Kellogg Company Fund; n National Dairy Council/Dairy Management, Inc.; and n Walmart Foundation.

This report was written by FRAC's Senior Policy Analyst, Etienne Melcher Philbin, and Senior Research and Policy Analyst, Randy Rosso. The findings and conclusions presented in this report are those of FRAC alone.

About FRAC

The Food Research & Action Center (FRAC) is the leading national organization working for more effective public and private policies to eradicate domestic hunger and undernutrition. For more information about FRAC, or to sign up for FRAC's Weekly News Digest and monthly Meals Matter: School Breakfast Newsletter, go to: .

Additional support for FRAC's breakfast and child nutrition work has been provided by the following:

n Anonymous; n Annie E. Casey Foundation; n The JPB Foundation; n Menemsha Family Fund; and n Tyson Foods, Inc.

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I. Introduction

M ore low-income students and schools than ever before are participating in the national School Breakfast Program. In the 2016?2017 school year, nearly 12.2 million low-income students participated in the program, an increase of 0.6 percent when compared to the prior school year. While participation has continued to increase, the rate of growth slowed during the last school year, from an average of 390,000 additional students in each of the four preceding years to almost 70,000 additional students in the 2016?2017 school year.

This continued growth in participation -- although slower than in previous years, likely because the economy is shrinking the number of low-income students -- is due to more schools moving breakfast out of the cafeteria and into the classroom, making it part of the school day; broad implementation of the Community Eligibility Provision, which allows free breakfast and lunch to be offered to all students in high-poverty schools and districts; and improvements to how low-income children are identified as eligible for free school meals. These strategies have contributed to substantial growth over the past decade -- 4.1 million more low-income children received school breakfast in the 2016?2017 school year than in the 2006? 2007 school year.

Success can be seen in school districts of all shapes and sizes -- large and small; urban, suburban, and rural -- as they adopt the strategies above to grow participation. Key factors contributing to schools making the choice to implement school breakfast expansion strategies include strong leadership within the school district; diverse and engaged school breakfast coalitions that include state agency, school nutrition, education, anti-hunger, and health

partners; proper and meaningful engagement and training for all school staff; research showing profound positive effects of school breakfast on health and learning; and strong communication channels among all partners with policies made clear and publicly available.

Efforts to increase breakfast participation pay off -- school breakfast leads to improved dietary intake, reduced food insecurity, better test scores, improved student health, and fewer distractions in the classroom throughout the morning. See the Food Research & Action Center's Breakfast for Learning, Breakfast for Health, and The Connections Between Food Insecurity, the Federal Nutrition Programs, and Student Behavior for summaries of the research on the health and learning benefits of school breakfast.

The Food Research & Action Center's ambitious but attainable goal of every state serving 70 low-income students breakfast for every 100 who eat school lunch would result in nearly 2.9 million additional children a year experiencing the positive academic and health outcomes that are linked to participating in school breakfast. The sustained increase in participation each year is helping to move the nation closer to this goal, but the slowed rate of growth in the 2016?2017 school year signals the need to redouble efforts to grow participation.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture, state child nutrition agency staff, policymakers, district and school leaders, educators and anti-hunger advocates must continue to work in partnership with school districts to implement effective strategies to ensure all students start the school day ready to learn.

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About the Scorecard

This report measures the reach of the School Breakfast Program in the 2016?2017 school year -- nationally and in each state -- based on a variety of metrics, and examines the impact of select trends and policies on program participation.

The report measures free and reduced-price school breakfast participation to determine how many lowincome students school breakfast is reaching nationally and in each state, using the ratio to free and reducedprice school lunch participation as a benchmark. Because there is broad participation in the National School Lunch Program by low-income students across the states, it

is a useful comparison by which to measure how many students could and should be benefiting from school breakfast each day. The report also compares the number of schools offering the School Breakfast Program to the number of schools operating the National School Lunch Program, as this is an important indicator of access to the program for low-income children in the states.

Finally, the Food Research & Action Center sets an ambitious, but achievable, goal of reaching 70 low-income students with breakfast for every 100 participating in school lunch; and calculates the number of children not being served and the federal dollars lost in each state as a result of not meeting this goal.

How the School Breakfast Program Works

Who Operates the School Breakfast Program?

Any public school, nonprofit private school, or residential child care institution can participate in the national School Breakfast Program and receive federal funds for each breakfast served. The program is administered at the federal level by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and in each state typically through the state department of education or agriculture.

Who can Participate in the School Breakfast Program?

Any student attending a school that offers the program can eat breakfast. What the federal government covers, and what a student pays, depends on family income:

n Children from families with incomes at or below 130 percent of the Federal Poverty Level (FPL) are eligible for free school meals.

n Children from families with incomes between 130 to 185 percent of the FPL qualify for reduced-price meals and can be charged no more than 30 cents per breakfast.

n Children from families with incomes above 185 percent of the FPL pay charges (referred to as "paid meals"), which are set by the school.

Other federal and, in some cases, state rules, however, make it possible to offer free meals to all children, or to all children in households with incomes under 185 percent of the FPL, especially in schools with high proportions of lowincome children.

How are Children Certified for Free or Reduced-Price Meals?

Most children are certified for free or reduced-price meals via applications collected by the school district at the beginning of the school year or during the year. However, children in households participating in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), and the Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations (FDPIR), as well as foster youth, migrant, homeless, or runaway youth, and Head Start participants are "categorically eligible" (automatically eligible) for free school meals and can be certified without submitting a school meal application.

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School districts are required to "directly certify" children in households participating in SNAP for free school meals through data matching of SNAP records with school enrollment lists. School districts also have the option of directly certifying other categorically eligible children as well. Some states also utilize income information from Medicaid to directly certify students as eligible for free and reduced-price school meals.

Schools should also use data from the state to certify categorically eligible students and they can coordinate with other personnel, such as the school district's homeless and migrant education liaisons, to obtain documentation to certify children for free school meals. Some categorically eligible children may be missed in this process, requiring the household to submit a school meals application. However, these households are not required to complete the income information section of the application.

How are School Districts Reimbursed?

The federal reimbursement rate the school receives for each meal served depends on whether a student is receiving free, reduced-price, or paid meals.

For the 2016?2017 school year, schools received

n $1.71 per free breakfast;

n $1.41 per reduced-price breakfast; and

n $0.29 per "paid" breakfast.

"Severe need" schools received an additional 33 cents for each free or reduced-price breakfast served. Schools are considered severe need if at least 40 percent of the lunches served during the second preceding school year were free or reduced-price.

Offering Breakfast Free to All

Many high-poverty schools are able to offer free meals for all students, with federal reimbursements based on the proportions of low-income children in the school. Providing breakfast at no charge to all students helps remove the stigma often associated with means-tested school breakfast (that breakfast in school is for "the poor kids"), opens the program to children from families that would struggle to pay the reduced-price copayment or the paid breakfast charges, and streamlines the implementation of breakfast in the classroom and other alternative service models. Schools can offer free breakfast to all students through the following options:

n Community Eligibility Provision: Community eligibility schools are high-poverty schools that offer free breakfast and lunch to all students and do not have to collect, process, or verify school meal applications, or keep track of meals by fee category, resulting in significant administrative savings and increased participation. For more information on community eligibility, see page 11.

n Provision 2: Schools using Provision 2 (referring to a provision of the National School Lunch Act) do not need to collect, process, or verify school meal applications or keep track of meals by fee category for at least three out of every four years. Schools collect school meal applications and count and claim meals by fee category during year one of the multi-year cycle, called the "base year." Those data then determine the federal reimbursement and are used for future years in the cycle. Provision 2 schools have the option to serve only breakfast or lunch, or both breakfast and lunch, to all students at no charge, and use economies of scale from increased participation and significant administrative savings to offset the cost of offering free meals to all students.

n Nonpricing: No fees are collected from students, while schools continue to receive federal reimbursements for the breakfasts served under the three-tier federal fee categories (free, reduced-price, and paid).

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